CityLife

Black Lights' talent shines through

Black Lights

Sitting in Salford boozer The Kings Arms, Manchester band Black Lights are reflecting on a past 12 months where every day seems to have given their collective tear-ducts a major workout.

There was the recording of their new EP where, upon hearing the final orchestra-enhanced studio mix, the band claim they “shed a few tears – the string section just sounded beautiful”.

Then, more recently, there was the band’s sell-out headline show at Manchester Academy 3, where the overwhelmingly enthusiastic crowd reaction had the band “really choking up – the crowd were singing along to every word”.

Good fortune, as you will have no doubt gathered, seems to have a strong effect on these three deeply sensitive souls.

With that in mind, and with the fantastic career they clearly have ahead of them, Black Lights had surely better stock up on those Kleenex supplies.

“We are an emotional bunch of lads,” laughs Black Lights’ keyboardist Howard Eastwood.

“I guess it’s expected for Manchester bands to be really super-confident and have that swagger about them, but we couldn’t be like that – it’d be false of us.

“We put so much passion into the music and if we do get a bit over-emotional, that just shows how much this all means to us.

“We do wear our hearts on our sleeves.”

A cynic might cast suspicion over Black Lights’ wide-eyed wonder and over-sensitivity, but there’s a simple truth behind it: they simply didn’t expect any of this incredible response.

Formed 12 months ago while studying at college, the Manchester three-piece – Eastwood, singer Jamie McCool and guitarist Jack O’Connor – began writing songs with no real intention of forming a band.

It was actually one of their tutors – and now manager – the musician Steve Trafford, a former Fall member and songwriting cohort with The Beautiful South’s Paul Heaton, who spotted their immense potential straight away.

However, this wasn’t just flickers of potential – it was quite possibly the finished article. The very first song the trio wrote together, the gorgeous In My Soul, delivered an instant and irresistible emotive-rock agenda: luscious, delicately restrained rock melancholia that recalled Elbow covering some long lost Tim Buckley tracks.  

The beautiful songs kept coming and coming, and by the time it came to showcasing this material in a live setting, the positive word-of-mouth had spread to the point that 400-capacity crowds were belting out the band’s songs back to them.  

“It’s been mad the last couple of gigs,” McCool smiles.

“We didn’t expect people to know the words, so when they all joined in on the chorus to In My Soul at the Academy, it was amazing. I was proper choking up, and you could tell how emotional I was.

“You’ll get a lot of bands who try to be cool and act as if they’re not affected by a big audience reaction, but I’m not like that. It’s a real buzz.” 

Not that McCool – despite that fantastic surname – is particularly the swaggering rock star type. Arriving for our CityLife interview wearing a bright blue Adidas hoodie and a pair of garish check shorts, the 19-year-old resembles more a student returning from his gap year than the front-man of Manchester’s most heart-on-sleeve rock ciphers.

Born and raised in Blackley, McCool admits to being the “least musical” of his band, his adolescent years spent mostly playing football or goofing around with his mates.

He recalls: “Music just wasn’t a big part of life where I grew up. No one was into music or playing instruments – everyone wanted to be a footballer.

“I knew I could sing a bit though; I’d always get up on the karaoke when it came on in the pub. My main karaoke song? Oh, it’s gotta be that old soul tune, Something Inside So Strong. I’d always be belting that one out.”

Leaving school at 16 and signing straight on the dole, McCool was offered relief from his daily torpor when he enrolled on an Access To Music course at the Abraham Moss Centre in Crumpsall.

By this point, already bitten by the songwriting bug on account of his musical heroine Florence Welch (“she’s incredible – the best voice out there”), McCool was itching to realise the melodic ideas in his head.

However, unable to actually play a musical instrument, he simply went and found the first man who could.

“Howard was the first person I asked,” McCool recalls.

“I came into college one day and I had this tune in my head, and I thought ‘I need to get this down right away’. I didn’t know Howard as a mate or anything, but I knew he played piano. So I just asked him to sit down with me and help me with this tune.”

That tune eventually became Black Lights’ signature track, In My Soul, and it was swiftly joined by over a dozen celestial rock classics in a similar vein, as the band (now bolstered by guitarist Jack O’Connor) hit an imperious creative roll.

Indeed, despite their infancy, the Manc trio seem to have swerved any potential creative fumbling and jumped straight to writing the songs you would expect them to write on their third album: the expansive, stately rock odysseys that cement their permanent place in the canon.
 
Bloggers and critics have been quick to make favourable comparisons to Tim Buckley, Coldplay and Elbow, and it’s certainly the latter band with whom Black Lights share a similar sonic worldview.

A band capable of using those grand rock signifiers (soaring vocals, string sections, lighters-aloft choruses) in superbly judicious fashion, Black Lights deftly temper their melancholy communion with an impressive emotional intimacy. 
       
“People do say we have that timeless sort of sound,” says McCool, “which is great to hear.

“You hear so many new bands, and you know straight away that they’re very ‘now’ – what’s in and supposedly cool this year.

“We’re all 19, but I don’t think we write music that reflects our ages at all. The songs we write are really natural – there’s nothing forced about it, and we’ll never try to write like any other bands just so we can fit in with a scene. What comes out is just instinctive – there’s a real trust and understanding when we’re writing together.”

After the heady euphoria of that last sold out Academy 3 gig (check out the YouTube footage), the trio are looking forward to a rather more intimate gigging
experience at Salford’s Kings Arms venue tomorrow. Not that the group will be any less – of course – super emotional about the occasion.

“A lot of my mates from Harpurhey came down to that last gig – which explains the mad atmosphere,” laughs McCool.
 
“I can’t wait for this Kings Arms gig, though; it’ll be laid-back and intimate and we’re bringing along the string quartet too. It’s gonna get emotional.”

Black Lights play The Kings Arms, Bloom St, Salford, tomorrow. For more info visit facebook.com/blacklightsmusic